The season of spring always inspires me. I love seeing nature wake up and come alive again after the cold and dark of winter. In my garden pots, bulbs are sprouting and buried shoots reach toward the sun. My Boston fern has been rescued from its indoor sojourn and is happily regaining its strength on my back deck. This time of year I really do miss putting my hands in a garden bed, but NYC offers many other ways to fill my soul.

Earlier in the month (on a cold, rainy winter evening) I was lucky enough to see the Carnegie Hall debut of Tony Siqi Yun, a gifted pianist who played Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No, 2 with the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal. It was a truly remarkable performance! This piece is a favorite with concert pianists, yet Yun made it his own in a way that made it feel fresh, new–like it was just happening for the first time. There was an electrifying immediacy to the energy he was sharing with the orchestra. It was one of those magical experiences when performer and audience are all in the moment together. Personally, I find this rarely happens inside the concert hall, where technical perfection and grounded interpretation are the goals. This performance had these, to be sure. But it transcended them.

I thought of this–an artist being in his flow state–when I was asked by clients in a workshop last week about the “problem” of over-preparation and sounding “canned.” This is a question I have gotten a lot (I first blogged about it ten years ago!). The truth is, the problem isn’t spending too much time preparing. It’s how mindfully you spend that time. If you memorize something with the goal of getting all the words in your head so you can go on autopilot when you speak–then yes, that is bad. But if you know your material so well that you are actually embodying it, living inside of it, and sharing that experience with your audience, magic can happen.

Like the gifted performer, a speaker absolutely needs to be prepared. The goal is to know your content so well you can share it with freshness and immediacy. Only then will you connect with your audience in a new, magical, memorable way. Like the first breezes that bring a hint of spring.